Lawmakers Revise Malloy Plan For Local Transit Development

CHRISTOPHER HOFFMANSpecial to The Courant

Local officials, small businesses oppose Malloy proposal on eminent domain for transportation plan

HARTFORD — In an effort to placate critics worried about loss of local control, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's administration is proposing changes to a bill creating a quasi-public agency to encourage redevelopment near train stations and CTfastrak stops.

"We think that the concerns, while they were legitimate in many cases, were a misunderstanding of what the original bill was intended to do," said Gian-Carl Casa, undersecretary for legislative affairs at the Office of Policy and Management. "We heard those concerns, and we have submitted language that we believe addressed them."

The proposed changes to the administration's bill are in a March 20 memo by Casa addressed to "interested people." They include elimination of a controversial provision granting the proposed Transit Corridor Development Authority the power of eminent domain.

They also explicitly state that municipalities would have to enter into an agreement with the authority to carry out a project. Critics said the original language made it appear that the towns and cities would have to defer to the authority.

In addition, Casa proposed giving the chief executive officer of communities that work with the authority a voting seat on its board for that particular project. His memo also calls for language explicitly affirming that local zoning and wetlands boards would retain jurisdiction for projects on private or municipal land.

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Kevin Maloney, spokesman for the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, which criticized the initial language of the bill, said that his organization was pleased with the proposed changes.

He was especially happy with proposals to add the chief executive officer of a community to the authority board and the affirmation that local zoning and wetlands rules would still apply.

"Our experience is that the we can make this language work," Maloney said. "We have to wait and see what's in the formal language of the bill. Certainly what Gian-Carl offered shows that OPM was listening."

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The bill's initial language rang alarm bells in many communities that feared it would strip them of development control within a half-mile radius of train and CTfastrak stations.

The proposal led Republican members of the Newington town council to send Malloy a letter calling for the bill's withdrawal and the Norwalk Common Council to pass a resolution condemning it. Officials in Stamford, which is locked in a dispute with Malloy's administration over a train station project, also expressed deep concerns about the proposal.

Newington GOP Councilwoman Maureen Klett, whose town will host two CTfastrak stations, called the changes "a start." Klett, however, said she'd still like to see the bill killed, but short of that, more changes. She remained concerned about towns having just one individual on the governing board, originally proposed to have 11 members.

"I think it's clear that they are obviously aware that people are mightily upset over the bill that was proposed," Klett said.

Democratic Newington Councilman Terry Borjeson, the body's majority leader, meanwhile, defended the original bill. Borjeson testified in favor of the legislation earlier this month as the town's representative to the Capitol Region Council of Governments, which supported the bill, as originally written.

"I think OPM's reaction is trying to mollify people a little bit," he said. "We're not really changing anything."